Tread Softly
by wallyflower
Summary: Two years after the defeat of Voldemort and in a wizarding world ruled by fear of escaped Death-eaters, Professor Snape finds Hermione Granger on his doorstep and finds himself caught up in another kind of war altogether. Compliant up to HBP.
1. Light Thickens

**Title:** Tread Softly

**Pairing:** SS/HG

**Canon compatibility:** Up to HBP, though use of Hermione's beaded bag is rampant.

**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter and all associated names and trademarks are property of JK Rowling.

**Notes:** This was intended to be a very long one-shot, but when I found myself writing a five-page and still incomplete summary of this story, I gave in and decided that it would be, once again, multichaptered. May the reader be warned, however, that updates will be, as usual, slow. Inspiration drawn from Diana Wynne Jones' _Howl's Moving Castle._ In homage, I've named a house-elf after her character, Sophie.

I've decided to stop apologizing for starting new stories, since I'm still finishing the old ones anyway and have really got nothing to apologize for other than the uneven quality of my writing. If you want _complete _stories, suck it up (as they say across the pond) and go look elsewhere; both fanfiction . net and Ashwinder have a field specifying if a story has been finished.

(I ask my kind reviewers to alert me at once to any inconsistencies. I've tried and retried to write this story so many times and in so many different ways, that I'm afraid I'm not altogether sure if I was consistent all the way.)

**/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\**

**Chapter one: Light Thickens**

The loud crack has me out of bed, wand drawn, in an instant. My heart pounds and I am seized with the sudden terror that I have, in the years since the defeat of the Dark Lord, allowed myself to become too lax in details of security. The thought that someone has broken through my carefully-set wards paralyzes me for an instant, before I spring to action; in a minute I have Apparated into the unilluminated living room of my own tiny house. Now I have one hand closed around the intruder's neck and the other jabbing my wand into a soft torso.

"Who are you?" I whisper harshly. "What are you doing here?"

The intruder, face shadowed in darkness, opens its mouth, and I am assailed by the smell of strawberries and the sound of a familiar voice. My gut clenches as the person—a woman—speaks my name. "Professor Snape," she says, "it's me."

Shock freezes me in place, but only for a moment. My wand is at her throat before she can speak further, and in the dim streetlamp-light that finds itself into my dark house, I can see the fear in her eyes as I press the wand closer; I move to hold her wrists by my other hand and I feel the pulses throb there, a counterpoint to her harsh breathing.

It has been a long time since I have had to look threatening in any way. I find that I am having difficulty managing, and it is an effort to suppress my own momentary fear that this invasion into Spinner's End is something more alarming, more dangerous. This is no time for panic.

She makes signs of choking, and while I relax the pressure on her throat—thinking distractedly of the bruises that would bloom like dark flowers on her young skin—I make certain that she is not safe from me. Immobilizing her with a wordless spell, I tilt her face roughly to mine and am surprised to find acquiescence in her eyes before I whisper, _Legilimens._

She is rough and untutored in the art of the mind—or is it that she has chosen to erect no walls, offering her mind for my inspection? I dive into the tangle of her memories, separating them, moving swiftly past the immediacy of her short-term memory to the reasons for her sudden appearance at my house. Again she gives them to me without hesitation, and the memories assault my consciousness: a familiar, gloomy house—a room—a Death-eater waiting, snake-like, to strike in the dark as she made her way inside her home. Her alarm—the stinging aching pain of a slicing hex on her leg courtesy of the Death-Eater; the sickening twist of her stomach from her hurried Apparition as she escaped. The warmth of a Protean-charmed coin in her hand; her frantic messages to her comrades, Potter and the Weasley boy: _Where are you?_

**/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\**

I have had enough, though I do not yet know all. I file most of it away for a later time; I want to hear what she will tell me. I release her and throw my wand between us, light spilling from it and illuminating her anxious face. "What the hell are you doing here?" I spit out. "How did you find me?"

The look of her, of a girl I had scarcely seen outside of Hogwarts now backed up against the fading wallpaper of my living room, is disconcerting.

"Please let's discuss this later," Hermione Granger says, coming forward to take my free arm and to squeeze it, perhaps in supplication, perhaps in genuine distress. I flinch away from the contact; I cannot help it. She sees this but refuses to release my arm, and keeps talking, momentarily transporting me to a time when her questions and her chatter rang in my ears, day in, day out.

"May I please stay here for the night, Professor?" she asks now, her voice hoarse and strange. "Please."

I wrench my hand free—stand back to look at her, and in the dim light of the room she seems pale and thin. There is a rip down the side of her denim trousers, exposing a sliver of white flesh and a cut, from which blood is dripping onto my mother's threadbare carpet. I feel my lip curling, familiarly, in distaste, before I mutter an _Evanesco_.

I return my gaze to her face and find her biting her lip; her eyes are so bright that for a moment I am afraid she is going to cry, but she restrains herself.

Her outrageous request seems to echo in the room, silent but for her heaving breaths. I wonder for a moment if I am dreaming. I never expected to see Hermione Granger again, and certainly never imagined that she would turn up on my door (or just inside it), bleeding and disheveled and pleading for shelter. The situation is altogether unreal, and begins to resemble the beginning of a novel or a play. _Enter damsel in distress._

I resign myself to the fact that this is not an unpleasant dream and that, from the looks of her, Miss Granger will need both an audience for a story, and a nurse for her wounds. Scowling, I mutter "_Accio_ wand," before turning my back on her, her wand in my pocket, certain that she will not hurt me. I make a bee line for the drinks cabinet across the room; I am not sure that I can hear what Hermione Granger has to say without borrowed fortitude. My injured leg groans, quietly, in protest at my quick stride.

She follows me uncertainly and is behind me in moments—it is not a large room—and when I turn to look at her I see her digging in a small, ridiculous beaded bag. I, drinking slowly, watch her over the rim of the small glass I have conjured. I should perhaps be more worried, but I am tired and slow after the adrenaline rush, and secure in the knowledge that I have both of our wands and much greater physical prowess, should this intruder attempt any attack. She is not, I know, an impostor, for I know her smell and have known it for years, and it does not change.

Her looks have, nonetheless. The lines of her face are familiar, but her hair is limp and her eyes are haunted. Whether her unnatural pallor is the result of terror or illness, I am not entirely sure; perhaps it is a little of both. I begin to forgive her for disturbing my sleep and for being the first person I have had any substantial contact with for the past few years.

She continues to fish in her bag for something. I continue to watch her, initial panic receding but my trepidation growing with every second. My eyes widen when, triumphantly, her hand emerges from its frantic search holding a small vial of clear liquid.

"Please, sir," she says, drawing my eyes back to that cruelly young face with its curiously old scars. "Please, sir, I'll take Veritaserum, anything, so you know I can be trusted. Please. Let me stay."

I put down the glass I am holding and replace it with the vial she is handing to me with all the alacrity of the desperate. I stow the vial in my pocket and hand her a new one from the folds of my robe—I trust her not to hurt me but I will not trust her further than that. She looks at the tiny bottle in my hand, filled with liquid identical to that which she has been proposing to drink, and hesitates for nary a second before coming forward and downing its contents in one go. She always was such a reckless girl and she is fortunate that the Veristaserum I have given her is very much the real thing, and nothing more or less harmful.

Her weakness betrays her and she sways on her feet. Before she may hit the ground I catch her by the elbows and lead her to a shabby couch by the window.

She leans her head back, exposing the scarred column of her throat, and puts a hand to her head as I ask the first question.

"What is your name?" I am standing in front of her, arms crossed across my chest. I refuse to sit by her to soothe her fevered brow.

"Hermione Granger."

"Why did you come to my house?"

"To escape."

"From what?"

"Death-eaters. Our location was compromised." Her answers are short and her expression is pained. Her quick, sharp breathing makes speaking difficult.

"Why come here, to this place?"

"I couldn't go to the Weasleys. They're in hiding and if I were traced or followed, they would have been in danger. I couldn't go to my parents', because they—I mean the Death-Eaters—would have expected it, and the house isn't heavily warded. I couldn't go to Hogwarts, as you know. And so, I… I came here."

"How did you know where to find me?"

"I knew where you live."

"How?"

But before I have finished the question, my unwelcome guest gives in to her fatigue—and, perhaps, to the effects of hypovolemia. Her eyes grow dim and she collapses on the couch, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Not even my veritaserum is strong enough to make an unconscious person answer a question.

I should throw her outside. What has she ever done for me, this ridiculous little tyrant with the incessant questions and self-righteous crusades? I want to be ruthless. I want to show her what it is like, the pain of not being trusted. However… The memory of her leaps to my mind—the memory of her face during my trial, held theoretically in my absence but which I attended _incognito_—the righteous indignation there, her anger on my behalf. I cannot do it.

The pain of the hex on her leg was real enough in her memories—she is at least truly injured. I move and push her, not entirely gently, to lie down on the couch, and she collapses in a tangle of bloody limbs and dirty robes.

I divest her of her outer clothing, sparing a thought for the blood on my floor and furniture. I examine the cut where it has lacerated her leg, conjuring cloths and pressing them against her to control the bleeding, which is profuse. She whimpers in pain, even in her sleep. The cut, which is jagged and dirty, extends from the outer side to the inner aspect of her thigh, and I find myself frowning in a moment of unexpected sympathy.

I am not inexperienced with cuts and wounds, but I am not a mediwizard. I am unpracticed in spells needed to sterilize and heal quickly. There is nothing suspiciously dark in the spell that has torn her flesh—not like my own variations on the slicing hex—and so I decide that her leg may heal by itself if the bleeding is stopped and an infection prevented. It will have to do.

I do not trust her completely, still. Immobilizing her again, I am free to hurry to my cupboards for a vial of the necessities: Dreamless sleep; dittany; blood-replenishing potion; a concoction to expedite the knitting of her torn muscles and subcutaneous tissue. And finally, one more bottle of Veritaserum; but that is for later.

It is no work at all to go into the kitchen, raise my face to the ceiling, and say clearly, "Boiled water and sterile washcloths" before they appear on the counter, courtesy of my house-elf Soppy, unseen and unheard for my satisfaction. I levitate them into the sitting room. I close my hand on her jaw and open her lips, dosing her first with the sleeping potion, for some pains are better endured while asleep.

I make quick work of cleaning her wounds, cutting neatly through the denim of her trousers to make a window and cleaning the tissue underneath. (I am relieved that she is not awake for this otherwise highly uncomfortable procedure.) If it really had been a Death-Eater lying in wait for her—and how had that happened? How had her location been compromised?—she was fortunate to escape with nothing more than a slicing hex. I give her the remaining potions save the truth serum, hands moving mechanically in familiar gestures even as my mind works quickly. Where are Potter and Weasley? Could they possibly be safe—and should not the rest of the Order be notified of both their discovery and their absence?

Most alarmingly to me—how can Hermione Granger have managed to locate _me?_

**/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\**

_End of chapter. _

Regular updates on weekends, I promise, at least until the end of March. Hang in there if you can bear to. Chapter two already written and the rest of the plot outlined, so _yay._


	2. Leaps of Faith

**Chapter 2**

Leaps of faith

/\ / \ / \ / \ / \

_Earlier that day_

The day has been exceedingly ordinary and quiet. The only intrusion into this facsimile of peace is the arrival of two owls—one bearing my copy of the afternoon edition of the _Daily Prophet_, and the other bearing a letter. There are no calls, but then nobody knows where I am; indeed, if anybody did, I doubt that they would have social calls in mind.

"Soppy!" I call for the fifth time since the simultaneous arrival of the two birds. They are both still tapping away impatiently at the window, but I cannot come to their assistance. "Soppy, open the bloody window! You know that I cannot remove my gloves at this point!"

Actually, she probably doesn't know any such thing, but I've always assumed that house-elves have eyes in every room. It was my misfortune to get the only house-elf who _doesn't_. She comes scrambling into the room, falling all over herself with apologies. I sigh and look on impatiently as she opens the windows with her magic. The birds sail into the room and I can hardly hear Soppy as she cries one "S-S-Soppy is s-s-sorry, Professor Snape!" after another, because the owls are flapping their wings and nipping me in the hair and shoulder.

When things are in order—windows closed, owls gone, letters on the table and my attention properly on the potion simmering by the window—I allow Soppy to read to me from the first couple of pages of the _Prophet._ The subscription, I should probably mention, is for Eileen Prince; nobody at the daily's office would probably know, or care, that the _in nomine _subscriber has been dead for decades.

They would probably care a damn sight more if the subscription were for Severus Snape.

I sigh and continue adding ingredients carefully. Six inches of tarantula hair; a kelpie ear. In a way I have been fortunate. Freedom has allowed me to earn my living, albeit under a company on an entirely different continent. I am no longer pursued by the long arm of the law. Harry Potter, victor of the previous war and hero of the decade, the century, the bloody _millennium_, made sure of that. But if my impression is correct, half of the wizarding world still wants my head on a platter either for the murder of Albus Dumbledore or for treason to the Dark Lord, and the other wants to laud me with chocolate frogs and Orders of Merlin for actions _in the service of the light._

I care for neither kind of attention.

"Two Death Eaters captured in Leicester," Soppy reads to me as I resume stirring.

"Speak up," I tell her shortly. "A little louder, if you please."

She goes on, stuttering at times and stumbling over unfamiliar words. I listen carefully nonetheless. I want to know who is still left. I want to know who might still pursue me for treason to the Dark Lord. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix may have won, but the Wizarding world is kept in constant terror by my old friends; old Snake-face would be proud. The Death Eaters, even now that the Dark Lord is dead and almost universally unmourned, seem to be gaining more and more control, reminding me of that last year, that last horrific year when I held the Headmastership of Hogwarts and around me the wizarding world seemed to be falling to pieces.

"…investigations are ongoing as well to determine the whereabouts of Lucius Malfoy, who, as we previously reported, escaped from Azkaban two months previous…"

The streets are still not safe for me. That is news enough, and I have no desire to hear more.

"Enough."

"Yes, Sir." Soppy's eyes, large as tea cups and as disturbingly blue as Mad-Eye Moody's, look up at me as she folds the newspaper and moves away.

"The other envelope, the letter—get it and open it. And tell me if it's from Salem."

"Yes Sir." From behind me Soppy makes the familiar noises of one fumbling with the letter opener. "It's from Salem, Sir, does Professor Snape want Soppy to read?"

The letter, then, is from Clark Vodopich. While he is not technically my employer, both his expertise and his position within the American Pharmacotherapeutics firm under which I work compel me to treat the letter with more importance than that rag they call a newspaper. I give the last careful, measured stir to my potion—one to be sent to Clark Vodopich for testing, in fact—and quickly divest myself of my gloves, snatching the letter from Soppy before she can read more than a few words.

It is nothing important; merely a request for a slightly less potent version of a formula for an anticoagulant potion I had sent them a week previous. There are also a few kind, enquiring sentences about the sobering potion they've requested and which I've just finished. At the bottom of the letter, however, something catches my interest.

_I'm sorry for bothering you with yet another question. It doesn't pertain to our work in the firm and you're free to disregard it if you want to_, the letter says in Vodopich's characteristically informal manner. _But what do you know about mind-altering potions that cause temporary global amnesia? I've been following your British magical news quite closely, and I'm amazed you people haven't gone insane with worry over those Death-eaters with the altered memories. So far it's only been Death-eaters, but to have a potion like that around could have terrible consequences, you know._

_Would you know of any such potion? More importantly, how do you think it can be administered? The question has been bothering me for a fortnight. _

I frown. From behind me, Soppy rolls in the tea cart, a farce if there ever was one. Even three years after the man's death, Soppy is still used to serving Headmaster Dumbledore, who liked his tea served at a regular time and done up with all sorts of rich puddings and cakes. She can offer me no such delicacies in this time of Depression. It is all I can do to gather enough ingredients for the potions that are my experiments; I have no galleons to spare for tea trays.

I finish reading the letter (hastily signed _Impatiently, C. Vodopich_) and glance at the pale tea and the slightly burned, plain biscuits that she was at pains to make this morning. (The plaster on her fingers show where she was burned.) I take a biscuit between two fingers and inspect it, while Soppy watches anxiously on. "Soppy," I say, not removing my eyes from the biscuit, "for the past weeks, have you been reading the rest of _Daily Prophet_ after reading the front pages to me?"

"Y-Y-Yes, Sir." I can almost feel her fidgeting. I sigh and bite into the confection, which tastes of sugar and burnt carbon.

"Is there anything about the captured Death-eaters having suffered a loss of memory?"

"Why no, Sir," Soppy replies, surprise colouring her voice. I look at her. "Soppy is not reading anything like what Professor Snape says."

"Are you absolutely certain?"

"Quite sure, Professor Snape, n-n-not for the last few months at least, Sir," she says. She seems happy, at least, to provide me some service at which she has not completely failed; I am certain that somewhere, somehow, the soul of Albus Dumbledore is having a grand laugh at my expense and at his own ridiculous demand that the clumsiest and most incompetent house-elf in Hogwarts be assigned to follow me around until my dying breath. She is at least literate.

I have to admit that my American colleague's question intrigues me. I know of no common potions that can cause transient memory loss, and the few that I know are both illegal and devilishly difficult to brew. They are also difficult to disguise, if one is planning to use them as silent poisons; even when altered to diminish the horrific taste, the smell of the active ingredient (the gallbladder of a Mermoset) is overpowering and cannot be disguised.

Despite myself, I should like to know more. Not all Death-Eaters are highly trained, but things are in a pathetic state indeed if my former colleagues can be tricked into taking a suspicious potion smelling of underwater rubbish.

It is a matter of an hour to send Soppy to the ministry's public library to filch a few publications (any wizarding spreadsheets or news magazines for the last three weeks, as an arbitrary cut-off) for my benefit. The streets may not be safe for me, but house-elves need not be afraid to go where wizards fear to tread. Furthermore, to assuage her anxiety, I've assured Soppy that her quarry will be returned, safe and sound, to the Ministry when I've finished.

The more I read and the less I find, however, the more my interest wanes; I resolve to finish my search for answers until another day, perhaps tomorrow.

There is, after all, no hurry; time may as well not exist here in my tiny house, where there has been no one but myself and my house-elf for a full two years.

/\ / \ / \ / \ / \

_The present_

I shoot awake, and promptly decide that I have had enough of unpleasant awakenings. I am too old for all of this fragmented sleep. My leg is killing me.

Granger has always been a highly skilled, extremely powerful (and sometimes surprisingly imaginative) witch; were she anybody else, I wouldn't at all be concerned about the wards I'd erected around the sitting room, designed to prevent her from doing any magic or from moving beyond the confines of the space. As it is, I berate myself for having fallen asleep in the small kitchen, slumped over the kitchen table, unshaven cheek plastered to the plasticized table cover. I rise quickly and search, half-blindly, for my wand in the dim, gray, early morning light.

I needn't have worried. After limping as quietly as I can to the living room—a farce of the stealth that I worked so hard to achieve during those long, black years—I find her lying where I left her, in almost the same position. The rest of the room is exactly the same, except for the presence of Soppy, who is standing motionless in front of Miss Granger.

I dismantle some of the more forbidding wards and move to stand at Miss Granger's head. Soppy is looking at her with the strange fascination she (my house-elf) usually reserves for my more beautiful potions.

"Soppy." I don't take care to whisper. Frankly I would rather have Miss Granger awake than not—the sooner I can get my answers and be rid of her, the better. "What is it that you think you are doing?"

Soppy shifts her weight and responds, but with her eyes kept on Miss Granger. "Soppy is knowing Professor Snape's guest," she says. "She is leaving socks for house-elves, and is Harry Potter's friends."

Wading through Soppy's uncertain grammar, I stifle a bark of laughter despite myself. Part of me wants to wake up Miss Granger, just so I can laugh at her and rub her face in the less elegant, more ridiculous parts of her childhood that remain, vivid as a painting, in my memory. Another part of me wishes that my own childhood indiscretions were as innocent. She looks quite innocent now too; more like a sweet, slightly under-nourished nineteen year old than the little tyrant who bossed half of Gryffindor around, set fire to my robes and wrote the word _Sneak_ indelibly on Marietta Edgecombe's forehead. Appearances can be deceiving.

I feel a moment of pleasure at my and Soppy's shared unity—until she conjures more washcloths and a basin of water, and begins to dab at some minor abrasions on Miss Granger's arms, perhaps obtained during the scuffle. My house-elf does this with a concentration and tenderness I've hardly ever seen before, and I cannot help but ask disbelievingly, "What do you think you're doing _now_?"

Soppy looks up at me, startled. "S-S-Soppy thought Professor Snape wanted to help Hermione Granger," she stutters. "Professor Snape is asking for cloths and for water—"

"_Quiet_. Stop it this instant. I treated what injuries were necessary to treat; there is no need to do more."

Soppy blanches, excuses herself-"Yes, Professor Snape, Sir. S-S-Soppy is sorry and is wanting to be excused"—and disappears, leaving behind the things she had conjured. I give a moment's pause to think whether I should continue where she left off, but I have to remind myself that I am not sure if I can trust Hermione Granger. She seems to trust me. Whether that trust should be reciprocated is something that has yet to be decided.

I must wake her up. Before I do, however, I take one last, long look at her. I do not remember what I was really like before I joined the Death-eaters. I am certain that I was an ugly youth, and that I was even uglier on the inside; I have tried to forget any memory of any greater detail. I did not, therefore, notice the transition from adolescent to adult while I was in the Dark Lord's service, and was too busy to ponder such things even had they occurred to me then.

I wonder if I look as different from my younger self as much as Hermione Granger differs from the tiny little thing who used to cry in the girls' toilet, and who was too short for some of the Potions benches in my old classroom that her feet used to dangle off them. She is still not tall, but she is reed-thin and obviously malnourished, and her hair is unkempt and looks like the end of a broom. As the sun rises outside there is greater light to see her by, and I examine the scar that crosses her left eye and traces part of her cheek; it is permanent, and magical. When I put my fingers near it I can sense the very faint, but present, ghost of an old curse. Most of her scars, however, I am sure, are internal. Her parents died before the last battle, leaving her with an empty house and the memory of the Dark Mark floating over the roof, the tingle of _Avada_ in the air.

My mind flies to my Potion. The potion in its fourth trial, the potion I've only begun to discuss with my American colleague, the potion that might change everything while changing nothing at all. That's right. I need to go back to my work. I need not to be distracted. I need her out of here.

"Miss Granger." I come forward and shake her shoulder. "Miss Granger. Wake up." When she doesn't stir, I try again, with more violence. "Miss _Granger!_ You cannot stay sprawled on my sofa forever. Wake up and tell me what the _hell _you're doing here!"

Her eyes pop open, and the look of alarm in her eyes makes me feel uncomfortable enough to withdraw until I am standing, back straight and wand out, before her again. She is disoriented for a moment and I sway with her, feeling the sense of the bizarre creep up on me again. She sits up and looks for her wand; realizing that it is still in my possession, she whispers the diagnostic spells I myself cast on her last night. I watch her dispassionately, waiting. She looks up at me, not with fear or trepidation, but with a rueful expression.

"I seem to have misplaced my wand," she says wryly, "and I appear to be too weak for wandless magic."

"I think you will survive," I say coldly in return. "Now, tell me what you're doing here." I take the bottle of Veritaserum from out of my pocket and whisper a spell to float it in her direction; I have no wish to go near her again. She catches the bottle and drinks, again with that unquestioning rapidity.

"How did you find this house?" I ask her immediately.

I watch, startled and fascinated despite myself, as a blush works its way form her neck to the roots of her hair. She stares at the floor before answering. "The portrait of Professor Dumbledore showed us, sir," she says. "When it finally woke up and spoke. It told me and Harry about this house, and about the pensieve in the Headmaster's chamber at Hogwarts. It told us how to gather evidence for your trial," she finishes as awkwardly as a student called to the Headmaster's office.

The familiar white-hot anger often gives way to a more deadened ache and indignation, but today my fury fires up anew at the invasion of my privacy, at the realization that it hadn't been Minerva who gathered those secret, unshowable memories as I suspected, but the Boy Who Lived and his insatiably curious companion. I feel naked, as though my dignity had been stripped from me; without my knowing it, I've dug my nails into my palms and the pain shakes me and brings me back to the present.

For a quick, shameful moment I want to strike her across the face—though it would be more satisfactory to have Albus Dumbledore or Harry Potter in her place. She looks so miserable and ashamed, however, that I feel my anger dissipate and be replaced with the overwhelming desire to be left alone.

"I know that I had no right to make use of the information again," she whispers, eyes still kept firmly on the floor. "I know that it was unforgivable." She does not say _I had no choice_, because she knows as well as I that there is always one. "But please, Sir. If you could please understand—if you could please help me…"

"Help you how?"

"If you could please let me stay." She's sitting up fully now, sitting on the edge of her seat and twisting one hand around a thumb, a mannerism I've never observed before. "At least until I find Harry and Ron and we find a new place to use. I'll try not to bother you, Professor Snape. I know that you—like your privacy. I will not try to cause you more inconvenience than necessary."

"Why did you come here?" I ask before I can stop myself. Confused, she opens her mouth to speak, and I cut her off before she can repeat herself. "I mean why did you come here when you know that it is _my_ house. Why did you come when you knew it would be easy for me to get rid of you?" I say this because I do not know how to ask, _Why did you trust me?_

She seems to understand, nonetheless. She seems to look up at me then with as much earnestness as she can muster. "I knew I could trust you," she says, unknowingly mimicking the very words in my mind. "I knew I could trust you, if not to retain me here, at least to listen. To give me a fair trial, so to speak. The rest of the wizarding world appears insane now, but you always struck me as perfectly sane."

I do not know much about the world outside—rather, it is more like I have chosen not to know more than the essentials. I have not stirred out of doors in two years other than to go to the tiny garden to collect ingredients; Soppy has done what was necessary for me, going to the shops, buying ingredients, even clothes. At the back of my mind there is the possibility of asking her more about the general insanity _later_, as though I could really be letting her stay.

I turn away from her, only enough to see her out of the corner of my eye, and look at the Foe-glass on a shelf in the corner of the room, half-hidden behind my mother's old schoolbooks. It's clear. She's clear. I don't know. I don't know if I can trust her, but her distress and her troubles appear genuine. This feels familiar and part of me, I know, is a little afraid of it—the feeling of being needed, of being _asked_. Of being responsible for something. It is an important feeling.

It had once been important enough to kill for.

What could it hurt, anyway? And what could she really do? She cannot take from me anything that is truly important, including (and I say this with no sentimentality) my life.

As someone watching an avalanche from afar, I feel myself giving way, and from the look in her eyes, she knows it too. She springs up, and despite myself I feel my arms stretch out in her direction as she sways on her feet, before falling back on the couch. Awkwardly I fold my useless hands against my chest. She doesn't appear to notice. She speaks through the cloud of dust she has raised, coughing slightly. "_Please_, Professor Snape! I'll—I'll clean your house. I'll do anything you want me to do. If you're still brewing potions, I can help with those too. I'm not—not very innovative, I fear, but I can help with the rote work, and _please_, Sir—"

Miss Granger can ramble with the best of them. How bizarre to find something in her similar to the young Bellatrix Black; I'm struck suddenly with a memory of the latter and her long, tangential monologues. So many memories, in one night and one morning, when I've grown so used to not remembering. Feeling somewhat spiteful, I murmur a mild hex, and an invisible zipper seals the mouth of my guest.

"That is enough," I say. I am tired. I want to be alone, even for a while. I want to ponder the consequences of my decision, which was swiftly made and which I already regret. The prospect of another person in my house—to talk to, to worry about, to get in the way of my work, to _spend_ for—makes me exhausted and apprehensive. Her eyes are wide and mutinous. Before releasing the spell I place a handful of others on her, saying them only to myself so she cannot hear and cannot identify them. She is in no position to be indignant at the prospect of unknown spells. When I have placed a tracker on her and a long-term shielding charm on myself, as well as an _Inactivator_ on her wand, I release the Zipping hex.

Before she can speak, I say curtly, "Up the stairs and to the right. There is a spare room. I do not want to see you until after sunset. And even then, do not hurry down."

For someone who recently suffered from massive blood loss, she is a sprightly thing. She clambers up the stairs fairly quickly—but not before giving me the first of many smiles, stretching the scar across her eye.

/\ / \ / \ / \ / \

**A/N: **Chapter three will be up next weekend. The second chapters of "Miss Stewart Disposes" and "Carrefour" are in the works in the meantime.

Also, I imagine that a mermoset is the underwater version of a marmoset. And I call it a Potions "firm" because I can.


End file.
